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Small business Congress-watch: Three Pending Bills and Why They Matter

crowdSPRING Blog

511: EXCEL Act (Introduced 3/11/2013) The EXCEL (Expanding Access to Capital for Entrepreneurial Leaders) Act amends the Small Business Investment Act of 1958 and seeks to guarantee the payment of securities issued by small business investment companies (SBICs) of up to $4 billion annually.

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Why Governments Don’t Get Startups

Steve Blank

Not understanding and agreeing what “Entrepreneur&# and “Startup” mean can sink an entire country’s entrepreneurial ecosystem. Who’s an entrepreneur? There are six distinct organizational paths for entrepreneurs: lifestyle business , small business, scalable startup, buyable startup, large company, and social entrepreneur.

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The Secret History of Silicon Valley 12: The Rise of “Risk Capital.

Steve Blank

The Small Business Investment Company (SBIC) Act in 1958 guaranteed that for every dollar a bank or financial institution invested in a new company, the U.S. Like all government programs, the SBIC was fond of paperwork, but it began to formalize, professionalize and standardize the way investors evaluated risk.